Zika virus (ZIKV) is a member of the Flaviviridae virus family and the Flavivirus genus. In humans, it causes a disease known as Zika fever. It is related to dengue, yellow fever, West Nile and Japanese encephalitis, viruses that are also members of the virus family Flaviviridae. ZIKV is spread to people through mosquito bites. The most common symptoms of ZIKV disease (Zika) are fever, rash, joint pain, and red eye. The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting from several days to a week. Today there is still no approved vaccine to prevent, or medicine to treat, Zika virus.
Travel tourism to nations where the recent epidemics were reported such as Polynesia has aided the geographical spread of the virus infection to Brazil, Columbia, Italy and to other countries. An autochthonous outbreak of the virus was reported in Italy caused by the locally established Aedes mosquitoes. In Asia, Zika virus infection has occurred sporadically in Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh although large epidemic outbreaks have not been reported in these regions. It seems the spread of the virus infection will keep extending to the U.S.A. and other regions in Europe and other locations.
The exact incidence of the rarer but potentially harmful viral infections during pregnancy, such as Zika virus and other flaviviridae is yet unknown, but may represent a clinically important problem due to the severity of the associated congenital abnormalities.
Zika virus can pass from a pregnant woman to her fetus during pregnancy or around the time of birth. Zika infection in pregnancy is a cause of microcephaly and other severe brain defects to the fetus. Other problems include eye defects, hearing loss, impaired growth, fetal loss, cognition disability and Guillain-Barré-Syndrom (GBS) Currently there are no active vaccines or other approved preventive medicine for Zika.
The current strategy, in case of maternal infection during the pregnancy, is to diagnose and treat the pregnant woman hoping that the woman will not pass the infection to the fetus. In case of fetal infection, pregnancy termination will be suggested.